Life is not about reaching the destination, but having one heck of a fun journey, together!

Off-the-Grid Tuesday

Every Tuesday, I will be sharing some ideas for living a lifestyle that relies less on natural gas, electricity, gasoline, etc. We would like to eventually live completely off the grid, due to both our desire to be green and our desire to save money. For the time being, however, we are trying to eliminate one electrical appliance a month.

So far:

–Rob had a treadle sewing machine. He loves the speed control, which is significantly better than an electric machine. It is also able to sew through thicker fabrics, which will help when he makes Ili some cloth pull-ups, when the time comes.

–We line dry when it’s warm outside, but we are not yet living in the marina.

–We replaced our stereo with an crank Victrola. This might just be more fun than economical though!

–We only use laptop computers, which use much less electricity.

–We have a Saturn SL, which gets great fuel economy. We experimented with Waste Vegetable Oil (WVO), with some success. Right now that car is sitting, unused. More about that at a later date.

So that is what we are doing now! We would love to heat, at least partially, with wood, and to heat water with wood. We have also considered solar panels–if not on our house, then definitely one for the boat (which only uses 12 volt)! Our refrigerator uses $70 in electricity per month, so we would like to upgrade to something smaller and more efficient (or an ice box!).